Snoqualmie Springs goes ‘Under the Sea’

Stephanie Young and Emily Tang both 8, play ‘Under the Sea’ as Ariel on their recorders during a dress rehearsal. By Chantelle Lusebrink

Snoqualmie Springs School students are growing gills, fins and tails to bring you Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”

This is the 11th year the students have put on SongFest — last spring, they preformed Disney’s “The Lion King.”

“It’s the show in its entirety that’s so amazing, because the children are so young. I think everyone will find it extremely entertaining,” said Connie Policar, the school’s music teacher. “But you have to remember how young they are, because we do have children that are 4 who are performing, and that is amazing in and of itself.”

Snoqualmie Springs is a primary grade school for children ages 4-8; each grade, from preschool to second grade, has an integral role to play.

Policar said she has a talented bunch of students, including some first- and second-graders who are playing Beethoven and Mozart duets and solos on their recorders in front of classmates and public audiences.

“Their musical abilities far exceed their chronological age,” she said.Students in the state don’t typically begin learning to read music until they are in third or fourth grade, Policar said.

For this year’s production, students will perform popular songs from the film, like “Fathoms Below,” “Under the Sea” and “Le Poisson.”

“It’s really exciting because I feel really proud to be Ariel,” second-grader Stephanie Young said. “We get to sing our own songs, and we get to pick things up from the table and show the audiences.”

“We’ve probably practiced for a few months,” said Emily Tang, another second-grader playing Ariel.

While the production isn’t a play or musical, Policar said it has something for everyone, including speaking parts, bucket drums for “Under the Sea,” backdrops, stage props and costumes — none of which she could have pulled off without parents’ help, she said.

For instance, students will don little chef coats, borrowed from the children’s culinary school Cookalicious Club, to perform the song “Le Poisson.” That song features Chef Louis attempting to cook a fish but who ends up chasing the crab Sebastian around his kitchen instead.

Preschooler Joey Poppelaars said “Le Poisson” is his favorite song in the show because he gets to say “sacre bleu.” But the evening is special, he added, because the students get to show their hard work to their parents.

Aside from the costumes and props, the show is all about the children and what they’ve learned, Policar said.

“Their vocabulary has increased with the words in the songs. This is music that they have grown up singing and seeing the movie, but you have another level of it when asked to perform it,” Policar said. “This is a way to see that and that children are doing really positive things in our community.”

Aside from that, she said, “People will laugh and have fun because it is so cute.”